Maybe.
Hopefully.
“That’s it? You just want me to recover the voicemail?” Tex’s voice was dry, as though he knew Squish wanted more.
He wasn’t wrong.
“That’s it.” For now, anyway.
Squish knew damn well that if the voicemail existed and said what he remembered, Tex would be just as driven to find Mandy as he was. Tex loved puzzles. No way would he let such a juicy one roll past him.
Plus, if Mandy was psychic—although they’d both avoided that word—maybe she could do more than find Lucky.
Maybe she could tell them who the traitor was in SEAL command, the one who’d betrayed them during Operation Whitehorse and almost gotten Squish killed. And maybe gotten Lucky killed. His gut clenched at the possibility. Either way, it all hinged on accessing that damn voicemail and proving he wasn’t nuts.
“Okay. I’ll see what I can do.”
The knot at the back of Squish’s neck relaxed beneath a rush of hot relief. “I appreciate this, brother.”
“Don’t thank me until we find out whether that message exists,” Tex said dryly. Then the line went dead.
Squish released a deep, raw breath. Well, that had gone better than he’d expected. At least Tex hadn’t called him crazy and alerted his doctor to come cart him away.
CHAPTER 2
Two hours later, the migraine was in full swing, with two new nasty symptoms joining the party. An invisible asshole was driving a white-hot spike through his left eye, and his gut began rocking and rolling. Fucking hell, the nausea was almost worse than the eye spikes and the jackhammer chiseling away at his brain. Almost.
Clearly, he needed to up the ante and crack open a blister pack of Imitrex.
He’d hoped to hold off on the pill until Tex called back, since his brain always went AWOL after he swallowed one. But Tex hadn’t given an ETA on recovering the voicemail. If an op went sideways, and lives hung in the balance, finding that message would get shoved to the backburner.
After swallowing the pill, he grabbed a fresh icepack. Phone in one hand, icepack in the other, he retreated to his dark bedroom and stretched out on the bed.
Which was when his phone buzzed.
He checked the caller I.D. Tex. Talk about shitty timing. He had fifteen, twenty minutes before his brain shut down.
“Good news brother, you didn’t hallucinate that message,” Tex said immediately.
“She left a voicemail?” The question emerged hoarse, on a tide of relief.
One less worry. Thank Christ.
“She did and said exactly what you described.” Tex’s voice turned wry. “At least you haven’t lost your memory. The call hit your phone fifty-two hours before your boots hit Amazon soil. I checked the time and date stamps. They’re legit.”
“Did you download a copy?”
“Sure did. Hang on.”
Squish’s chest tightened as Mandy’s voice played through the phone’s speaker.
After her voice trailed off, Tex came back on the line. “I’m emailing the audio file to you.” He paused, before adding coolly, as though he expected to receive shit, “I’ve already forwarded the file to Commander North since he headed up that op, as well as Commander Westmoore.”
Ah, hell.
Squish scrubbed a hand down his face as exhaustion crashed over him. The room seemed to darken even further.
“You better brace yourself for some serious questions about this.”
No shit.
But he reeled the frustration back. Tex had simply followed protocol, which was more than Squish had done.
“I wonder if she was working with Command Central’s mole,” Tex mused. “She specifically mentioned Lucky’s tracker, which is classified intel.”
Squish nodded slightly and froze as his stomach rolled and another spike hit his eye. He’d thought of that possibility, but it just didn’t track.
“That doesn’t explain how she knew Lucky was going to kill Apostolos. We played that by ear. Lucky moved in because he was the closest. Plus, there’s no way she could have guessed Lucky would go with a neck twist instead of a round to the head. And while the mole might have instructed the rebels to blast the compound’s entrance with those RPG rounds, nobody could have known I’d be beneath it when the ceiling fell. None of that was scripted ahead of time.”
“True.” More thoughtful silence. “She claimed she saw it in a dream.”
“That’s what she said,” Squish agreed.
He expected some sound of disbelief to travel down the line—like a scoff or a snort—but the silence was assessing rather than disbelieving.
“Precognition. That’s what we’re talking about. Someone who can see the future,” Tex murmured,
“Are we?” Maybe so. She’d been right about everything. But fuck, he still had trouble wrapping his mind around it. “You believe her?”
“I don’t know,” Tex said slowly. “But it bears investigation. North gave the green light to track her down.”
Of course he had. The commander was hoping she would lead them to their mole.
A clacking sound came through the phone. No doubt Tex was already bent over his computer, working the keyboard.
“Based on what you said earlier, I think she’s gone to ground. Looks like she ran as soon as she left you that message. She must have known you’d look for her.”
“Yeah.” Squish’s voice was grim.
She’d done him a solid by calling to warn him. Hell, she’d put herself at risk by leaving that message. It was obvious she’d known he was career military. She must have known calling him would lead to military interest. Yet she’d called him anyway, even though he’d shot down her romantic advances five or six times over the past year. Even after that last altercation when he’d finally snapped and torn her a new asshole—she’d still called to warn him.
He scrubbed a hand down his face, shame heating his gut. Even after he’d completely humiliated her, she’d still tried to warn him.
She was a better person than he was.
“You know, there’s a rumor that the CIA has an off-the-books division that uses psychics.” As Squish digested that, Tex went on. “Russia, Germany, the UK, China—hell, they’re all rumored to have their own psychic spy networks.”
“Do you believe in that shit?” Squish asked, as a drugged feeling swept over him. The pill was kicking in.
“Hell…” Tex fell silent a moment before saying, “I don’t know.” There was a shrug in his voice. “But I’m not ruling it out, either.”
“Same,” Squish admitted quietly, settling deeper into the mattress as all his muscles relaxed.
“I checked into the number she called you from. It was a burner.”
Tex’s voice came from a distance, down a long, echoing tunnel, even though the phone was still in his hand, pressed to his ear.
“No surprise there,” Squish murmured.
If someone was on the run—and they were smart—they’d avoid personal cell service for fear the phone could be traced. Mandy was a lot of things—a beautiful, distracting pain in the ass—but she wasn’t stupid.